Much remains to be solved in the field of information retrieval. That becomes obvious just by scanning the list of papers to be presented by Microsoft Research during SIGIR 2009, the 32nd annual conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval.

The event, to be held in Boston from July 19-23 at the Sheraton Boston Hotel and Northeastern University, will feature 74 accepted papers, in addition to a busy schedule packed with tutorials, workshops, posters, demonstrations, and talks. And of those accepted papers, no fewer than 21―28 percent―come from Microsoft Research.

That should come as little surprise. Microsoft Research has a history of strong participation in SIGIR. Over the past four years, 58 papers from the organization’s labs have been accepted for presentation during this prestigious conference, an indication of how seriously Microsoft is taking its goals of refining and advancing the state of the art in information retrieval.

Microsoft Research’s support for SIGIR is hardly limited to papers, either. Five workshops to be conducted July 23 feature Microsoft Research personnel. Four of the paper sessions will be chaired by researchers from the organization. Of 104 posters to be displayed during the gathering, 12 will be from Microsoft Research, which is also contributing one demonstration and a talk during the industry track of the conference. Microsoft Research is a gold sponsor for SIGIR 2009.

Meng Wang and Xian-Sheng Hua of Microsoft Research Asia, along with Bo Liu of the University of Science and Technology of China, will conduct a demonstration on July 20 entitled Accommodating Colorblind Users in Image Search.

Natasa Milic-Frayling of Microsoft Research Cambridge acts as session chair for a July 20 collection of papers called Recommenders I. Tie-Yan Liu of Microsoft Research Asia chairs the Learning to Rank I session on the morning of July 21, and that afternoon, Susan Dumais of Microsoft Research Redmond will chair the Interactive Search session. The following morning, it’s Tetsuya Sakai’s turn, during a session entitled Evaluation and Measurement I.

Microsoft Research attendees will be busy collaborating with academic partners during the July 23 workshops, participating in five:

The Future of IR Evaluation, organized by Sakai, Shlomo Geva of the Initiative for the Evaluation of XML Retrieval (INEX) and the Queensland University of Technology, Jaap Kamps of INEX and the University of Amsterdam, Carol Peters of the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum and the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Information Science and Technologies, Andrew Trotman of INEX and New Zealand’s University of Otago, and Ellen Voorhees of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Papers

Context-Aware Query ClassificationHuanhuan Cao, University of Science and Technology of China; Derek Hao Hu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Dou Shen, Microsoft; Daxin Jiang, Microsoft Research Asia; Jian-Tao Sun, Microsoft Research Asia; Enhong Chen, University of Science and Technology of China; and Qiang Yang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Risky Business: Modeling and Exploiting Uncertainty in Information RetrievalJianhan Zhu, University College London; Jun Wang, University College London; Ingemar J. Cox, University College London; and Michael J. Taylor, Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Towards Methods for the Collective Gathering and Quality Control of Relevance AssessmentsGabriella Kazai, Microsoft Research Cambridge; Natasa Milic-Frayling, Microsoft Research Cambridge; and Jamie Costello, Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Where to Stop Reading a Ranked List? Threshold Optimization Using Truncated Score DistributionsAvi Arampatzis, University of Amsterdam; Jaap Kamps, University of Amsterdam; and Stephen Robertson, Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Posters

AdOn: An Intelligent Overlay Video Advertising SystemJinlian Guo, University of Science and Technology of China; Tao Mei, Microsoft Research Asia; Falin Liu, University of Science and Technology of China; and Xian-Sheng Hua, Microsoft Research Asia.

Concept Representation Based Video IndexingMeng Wang, Microsoft Research Asia; Yan Song, University of Science and Technology of China; and Xian-Sheng Hua, Microsoft Research Asia.

Wen Zhang, University of Science and Technology of China; Jun Yan, Microsoft Research Asia; Shuicheng Yan, National University of Singapore; Ning Liu, Microsoft Research Asia; and Zheng Chen, Microsoft Research Asia.

Topic (Query) Selection for IR EvaluationJianhan Zhu, University College London; Jun Wang, University College London; Vishwa Vinay, Microsoft Research Cambridge; and Ingemar J. Cox, University College London.

Usefulness of Click-Through Data in Expert SearchCraig Macdonald, University of Glasgow; and Ryen W. White, Microsoft Research Redmond.